Sociology

Why using good sources matter...

When you endeavor to find sources related to a topic of interest for your academic writing, you are demonstrating a number of skills

• You are able to synthesize a variety of information and integrate it into your own work
• You are able to investigate the dialogue that has occurred related to an area of interest and engage in that conversation through your academic writing
• Using good, credible reliable sources will elevate the accuracy and authority of your own work

Authority is Constructed and Contextual

Information, in any format, is produced to convey a message and is shared via a selected delivery method.  The iterative processes of researching, creating, revising, and disseminating information vary, and the resulting produce reflects these differences (ACRL par. 13).

• Information creations are valued differently depending on the context and purpose for which they are created
• Audience matters. Certain things are created for specific purposes and don't make one format of information better. It is up to us to discern what information process best fits our information needs.
• In your own creation process, understand that your choices in what type of information you use, impact the purpose for which the information product you create will be used and the message it conveys.

Source: Project Cora https://www.projectcora.org/assignment/information-spectrum

As part of your research proposal, you’ll develop a qualitative research question. This question will guide the second and third sections of your proposal.

When forming your research question, consider the following:

• Is it clear? Can it be easily understood by your reader?

• Where does it come from? What is the origin or context of your question?

• What do you hope to achieve? What are your goals in answering this question?

• Is it answerable? Can the question be addressed through research?

• Can it be answered empirically? Will your research be grounded in real-world data?

• Who or what can help? Consider who or what might provide insights for your research.

A strong research question is also:

• Focused: Narrow enough to address in your assignment.

• Concise: Expressed in the fewest words possible.

• Complex: More than a simple yes/no question.

• Open: Researchable, encouraging further inquiry

Dr. Ari has shared some general topics that students wish to explore.  We are going to break off into groups and apply the "focus funnel".  This exercise encourages us to ask ourselves some questions about our topics.  This exercise has 3 steps. 

1. Present a broad topic - in groups of 2-3 workshop your own topic to see if there is a way to narrow it down into a focused question. Examples of topics that might be too broad to research are: 

• Racism
• Sexism
• Social Media
• Academic Stress
• Environment
• Student Athletes
• Online activism
• Transportation

**You are encouraged to apply your own topics during the exercise.  

2. Use the "Focus Funnel" - respond to the following prompts in relation to your broad topic

• What aspect of this topic interests you the most? (example: health misinformation on social media)
• What demographic did you want to investigate? (students, seniors, men, women etc.)
• Geographical location? (Canada, Alberta, Calgary, MRU, specific community).
• What about it do you want to explore? (what is the angle or lens in which you want to explore this question? Beliefs, behavioural impact, literacy etc.)

3. Now form a question

Examples of some refined questions from the prompt "social media"

Behavioral Impact Angle: How does exposure to health misinformation on Instagram influence the health behaviors of university students?

Perception/Belief Angle: To what extent do university students believe health information found on Instagram, and how can they distinguish credible from non-credible sources?

Information Literacy Angle: How effective are university students at identifying bunk health information on Instagram?

Platform-Specific Influence Angle: What role does Instagram play in shaping university students’ perceptions of health and wellness trends, particularly when the content is misleading or inaccurate?

It is important to find a way to organize your ideas as you are reading articles. Some people find it helpful to create a synthesis matrix or concept map while they are reading to help them identify major themes and how different authors contribute to the theme.

Synthesis Matrix

The matrix method is one way of contrasting your sources in preparation for synthesis.

Use a table in Word with a column for each of your sources. Develop rows based on key themes in your paper with room for more columns that emerge from your readings. When a source relates to one of the columns, note the key point in the box, and add a page number so you can find the point again quickly.

Topic: Pet ownership during COVID-19 and impact on owners and pets

Additional Resources

• Synthesis Matrix - Florida International University

Take 3-5 minutes and sort these sources into the column that you think it would best fit (academic/scholarly or not academic). 

Source Sorting Activity (click on link).  You must authenticate with some sort of gmail/mru account.

Scholarly vs. Popular Sources

A scholarly publication contains articles written by experts in a particular field. The primary audience of these articles is other experts.

Many of these publications are also referred to as "peer-reviewed," academic, or "refereed."

Refers to the editorial and publication process in which scholars in the same field review the research and findings before the article is published.

Some Helpful Questions for Identifying a Scholarly/Academic Article

1. What are the author’s credentials? Was it written by an expert?

2. Was it published in a journal (is there a DOI?)? (If you are not sure if a source is a journal article, you can enter the title of the publication into Ulrichs Web to check.)

3. Does it use academic or more technical language?

4. Does it includes a reference list of sources that it is citing?

5. How long is it? (Scholarly articles are typically longer than popular or news articles.)

6. Does it have a "Received" and "Accepted" date on it?

7. Is it an actual article? (Sometimes other types of content are included in scholarly publications, such as editorials/opinion pieces and book reviews. Make sure you are looking at an article.)

1. Define your research question

• You may need to some exploratory searching of the literature to get a sense of scope, to determine whether you need to narrow or broaden your focus

• Identify databases that provide the most relevant sources, and identify relevant terms to add to your search strategy

• Finalize your research question

2. Determine what you will include/exclude from your review

• How far back in time will your search go? 

• What types of sources will you include in your literature review? Are you interested in journal articles, books, dissertations/theses, and reports from non-profits or government agencies? This will largely depend on your discipline. 

• Are you focused on finding a particular type of research study (e.g. you only are interested in finding randomized controlled trials)?

3. Choose databases and conduct the search

• Conduct searches in the published literature via the identified databases. Depending on your topic, you may also want to search databases listed on other subject guides.

• Examine the citations of on-point articles for keywords, authors, and previous research (via references). You can also use tools like Google Scholar or Scopus to see who has cited articles since their publication. This process, called citation chaining.

• Watch for sources that have been cited many times by other scholars. These are often seminal works - meaning they are considered foundational to the field. Sometimes these articles/books were published many years ago, so if you are using date limits in your Google Scholar or database search you may be excluding them from your results.

• Save your search results in a citation management tool such as Zotero or Mendeley

4. Synthesize the information gathered

• Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of individual sources

• Group your results into an organizational structure that will support why your research needs to be done, or that provides the answer to your research question  

• Develop your conclusions

5. Analyze the information gathered

• Are there gaps in the literature - aspects of the topic where little or no research has been conducted or questions remain? One place to find references to gaps in the literature are in the discussion/conclusions sections of research articles, as authors are expected to identify areas for future research. 

• Who has done significant research on the topic?

• Is there consensus or debate on this topic?

• Which methodological approaches work best for answering the research question?

6. Write the literature review

• Pick an organizational structure, i.e., themes, approaches, concepts, methodologies.

• Organize your citations and focus on your research question and pertinent studies

• Compile your references or works cited page

Let's try this quick activity:  

Take a look at the image below.  Using the link provided, type in words or phrases that you would use to describe this image. Think: how would I search to retrieve a similar image? 

[Figure 1. jobbgem. Traffic [Photograph].https://flic.kr/p/4roEou]

What words would you use to describe this image? 

Example: Translating a question into search terms

Example: Developing a search "string"

• Theme 1 (population): adolescent* OR teen* OR youth*
• Theme 2: “identity formation” OR “identity development” OR “self-identity”
• Theme 3: "social media" OR "social network"

Translating these themes into a database: Eg. SocIndex

LibrarySearch is MRU Library's one-stop search interface/catalogue that brings together resources across format, time, and subject. 

We have about 1.3 million e-resources and 221,000 physical resources in our collection, and LibrarySearch searches across those.

Things to remember when using LibrarySearch:

1. Sign in to save searches, items, and to request materials.

2. Use the pin icon to save books and articles to your Favorites for future reference.

3. Use the filters on the right. You will use Availability, Resource Type, and Date filters most often. Filter settings can be "locked in" so that you don't have to reapply them to every search that you make.

4. Some items may not be available, however, you can request unavailable items using what is called interlibrary loan.

5. When viewing an item record, scroll down to the Get it (for hardcopy/physical items) or Access options (for electronic items) section to get access to the item.

Helpful Search Operators to Use in LibrarySearch

You can use what are called search operators to search in a way to combine or omit different terms by telling the search engine exactly what you want and this can help you save some time (and frustration!)

• Use quotation marks to keep specific phrases together:

  • "social media"

  • "public space"

  • "inclusive design"

  • "fast fashion"

• Use AND to combine search terms (LibrarySearch automatically creates an AND when you write terms one after another, but it can be good practice to use an AND to help you understand the searches that you build) (AND narrows your search):

  • "social media" AND privacy

• Use OR to connect two or more similar terms (OR broadens your search):

  • "social media" OR "social networking"

• Use wild cards to substitute a letter or suffix with a symbol:

  • access* (in this example, the search access* will search for records that contain strings such as accessible and accessibility)

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is another great way to find high quality resources.

Besides providing links to resources in MRU databases, Google Scholar links to online repositories that contain articles the author has been allowed to upload.  Academia.edu and ResearchGate are among the repositories searched by Google Scholar.

By clicking on the Settings icon, you can select library links to show library access for up to 5 libraries (type in Mount Royal and click on save).  If you are logged into MRU library, links should automatically populate if you are running a Google search in another window. 

Google Scholar has a nifty citation chaining function. The Cited by function will forward you to indexed scholarly material that has cited a resource that you may be interested in. The Related articles link will direct you to similar articles that may have the same metadata or keywords. 

Helpful Search Operators to Use in Google Scholar

Google Scholar's Advanced Search is found by clicking the menu icon in the top left.

You can also add search operators to Google Scholar searches to build your own custom advanced searches in similar ways to LibrarySearch:

• Use quotation marks to keep specific phrases together:

  • "climate change"

• Avoid using AND to combine search terms with Google Scholar, as the search engine automatically creates ANDs between concepts and sometimes adding an additional AND can confuse the search syntax.

• Use OR to connect two or more similar terms:

  • "social media" OR "social networking"

• Use wild cards to substitute a letter or suffix with a symbol:

  • ethic* (in this example, the search ethic* will search for records that contain strings such as ethics, ethical, and ethically)

Databases

Books

Citation Help

• Use the "cite" feature in most search tools to get you started with most resources (you will need to review and correct the citation).

• Cite Sources: Learn the correct way to cite sources by using these guides, tutorials, and videos.

  • MRU Guide to APA Style for Referencing (2023-2024)

  • MRU Guide to APA Style for Formatting a Paper (2023-2024)

  • APA Formatting and Style Guide (7th Edition) (Purdue OWL)

• Academic Success Workshops: Academic Success Workshops are 75 minutes long and are offered both in-person and online. Registration is required.

• Appointments: Personalized online or in-person 30-minute appointments with a Learning Strategist at Student Learning Services located on the 2nd floor of the Riddell Library & Learning Centre.

• Use the Service Desk on the 1st floor of the RLLC for assistance as well as the library chat feature on the library website for quick citation questions.